by Alessandra Feola | Jun 16, 2014 | The Urban Media Lab
By Paola Brizi
Gregorio Arena and Christian Iaione presentations about collaborative economy and shared administration at 2014 Forum PA
The XXV edition of the 2014 Forum PA took place from the 27th to the 29th of May. It is the main conference for the innovation and modernization of the Italian public sector, this year titled “Let’s take commitments, let’s find solutions” which was attended by Professors Gregorio Arena and Christian Iaione to present the Regulation on the collaboration among citizens and administration for the care and regeneration of urban commons and to discuss about collaborative economy.
Among the topics of discussion in the 2014 edition of the Public Administration Forum, which was held at the Palazzo dei Congressi in Rome, the principles of transparency, participation and collaboration have taken on great importance, aimed at building new relationships between government and society.
The Forum has involved politics, businesses, governments and all the innovator actors in public administration and, in two separate conference sessions, Professors Gregorio Arena and Christian Iaione illustrated the work carried out by Labsus to foster the collaboration between institutions and citizens, in particular through the drafting of the Regulation on the collaboration among citizens and administration for the care and regeneration of urban commons, recently approved by the two Municipalities of Bologna and Siena.
Arena: “From the open government to the partner state”
According to professor Gregorio Arena the administrations reflect the needs and the values of the society they serve, so that their reform will have to be in tune with the major underlying trends of the society, at that particular moment in history.
Today, the main theme around which we have to build a new model of society is that of “sharing”, – adds the professor – a concept that requires a shift from “I” to “Together”. In fact, if we accept the idea that we are living in what is defined a “sharing society”, i.e. a society in which the use is more important than the ownership, this theme could become one of the inspiring souls of the administration reform which is so much discussed in this period in Italy, putting it in line with the society itself.
“In Italy this is feasible thanks to three elements”: the constitutional provision of Article 118, according to which the public authorities shall promote the autonomous initiatives of citizens carrying out general interest activities, which necessarily leads to the sharing; the organizational model defined “shared administration” by Arena himself in an essay of 1997 and which goes beyond a mere participation in decision-making but which means instead the sharing of general interest functions with the administration; finally, the third element is the paradox of a society like ours where there are those who want to actively take care of the commons, but cannot do it because they are not allowed to.
“For this reason Labsus – Laboratory for Subsidiary worked for two years within the City of Bologna aimed at writing a Regulation, setting in three districts of Bologna but with a look over the horizon, thinking about a tool that would have served all eight thousand Italian municipalities”.
The heart of the Regulation is the Covenant of Cooperation between the Municipality and the citizens to share the responsibility for the caring of the urban commons. “This is a fundamental concept, because we have lived for generations on the idea of the delegation, the idea that someone else will take care of our problems. We must instead recover a sense of collective responsibility, not in the negative sense of the term, but in the Latin sense: respondere, referred to those who give answers”.
Iaione: “Twist and Share, Public administration at the turning point of collaborative economy”
Many public policy and administration scholars are questioning the new phenomenon of the Public Administration seen as enabler, and on how there can be innovation without excluding the institutions.
According to Christian Iaione the explosion of collaborative paradigm corresponds to a new role of the public administration: “We are in the third institutional revolution so, after the Leviathan state of the nineteenth century and the Welfare state of the twentieth century, now is the time for a state that no longer deals with every issue, but of a relational and enabler state”.
Within this social innovative phenomenon, not dictated by the economic crisis, the public administration should take on the necessary role of enabler by fostering strong partnerships with its citizens who hold competencies, resources and knowledge, thus discovering the value of collaboration and initiating new institutional paradigms to convey these energies toward civic objectives of general interest.
The Regulations for the care and regeneration of urban commons, drafted by Labsus in collaboration with the Municipality of Bologna, is just a tool to facilitate the deployment of these new techniques that allow the diffusion of positive impacts on the community.
The Article 2 contains a definition of the urban commons seen as “non-abstract but almost operational category, because they are both public and private goods of which the citizens together with the institutions decide to share the responsibility of care and renewal, through processes of participatory democracy, precisely because these are functional assets for the individual and collective welfare”.
“The Regulation is a manual for the collaboration between the outside and the inside of the government”, thanks to which the administration becomes an interlocutor between all the collaborative economy actors. It represents a platform used to enable the citizens motivation for the caring and regeneration of urban common tangible and intangible goods, together with the government and giving answers to the main community problems.
It is also a platform of economic policy: it implies in fact the idea of a collaborative business model that creates value through the collaboration of different actors, whether individuals, associations or companies.
“This regulatory infrastructure is lacking, however, of two fundamental elements: the communication and training”, i.e. the construction of platforms for communication but also appropriate digital media and educational workshops for young people to involve them in the maintenance of the civic commons.
Since 2010 Labsus has launched a project involving two high schools in Rome, and it is now promoting it to other schools thanks to “Rock Your School“, the School of civic maintenance of commons. The leading idea is to create a shared city hall, in which the students are educated and trained for this cultural change through active schools and co-design laboratories, to make businesses, schools, universities and institutions collaborate, and to allow this cultural paradigm shift becoming a living reality.
by Federica Maranesi | May 27, 2014 | The Urban Media Lab
On May 29th, at 9.30 the conference “Twist and Share” will take place in Rome within the 2014 ForumPA fair.
Christian Iaione, Director of Labsus, will be giving a speech about what kind of institutions need to be designed for a collaborative economy, and to present the Regulation on the collaboration among citizens and administration for the care and regeneration of urban commons drafted by Labsus with the Municipality of Bologna and recently approved by the City Council. The conference will focus on the concept of sharing, understood as a real and concrete institutional technology which can modify the productive chain of values through the empowerment of city users, going beyond the dichotomy among public and private sectors. During the conference close attention will be paid to the worldwide expansion of the collaborative governance models which characterize all the phases of the value creation process, from availability of resources, to design and consumption of products and services. In this context the Public Administration may play a key role as a mediator enabling the active actors of collaborative economy, and also as an accelerator for the spread of positive impacts on the community and as am hub of a governance network.
by Giulia Spinaci | May 23, 2014 | The Urban Media Lab
On Saturday June 14th 2014, from 10 am to 10 pm, the city of Bologna will host the first RENA Festival of the Communities for Change, at Palazzo Re Enzo.
RENA is an independent and plural association centred on young people who want to make Italy an Open, Responsible, Transparent and Balanced country. For the first time, RENA has organized a Festival, which will provide all willing organizations, public administrations, associations and enterprises a place to build new forms of collaboration.
Thanks to the 2013 RENA project “A caccia di Pionieri”, RENA has seen that in Italy, there are many innovative communities, which represent the future of the country. Thus, the Festival of the Communities for Change will be a workshop day, where all best energies of the country will have the opportunity to meet and to exchange their success stories. The topics of discussion will range from crowdfunding to sharing economy, from social innovation to governance of the commons.
Don’t miss this wonderful opportunity to leave an indelible mark!
by Giulia Spinaci | May 22, 2014 | The Urban Media Lab
On May 19th 2014, LabGov – Laboratory for the Governance of the commons organized the event “Coltiviamoci” at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome. In organizing such a meeting, LabGov had the aim to present both the results achieved in the 2013/2014 academic year and the focus of the laboratory for the 2014/2015 session, namely the governance of the environmental commons. However, the event was also an occasion for a panel discussion, as LabGov had the pleasure to host prestigious speakers: Giovanni Lo Storto, LUISS Guido Carli CEO; Carmelo Troccoli, the National Secretary of Coldiretti Giovani Impresa; Luca D’Eusebio from the association Zappata Romana; Albino Ruberti, Managing Director and President of Zètema Progetto Cultura s.r.l. and coordinator of the working group Lazio Expo 2015. Professor Christian Iaione and Professor Gregorio Arena (Labsus) participated at the conference as LabGov founders and promoters.
Four neo-LabGovers, Marina Bassi, Edoardo De Stefani, Federica Maranesi and Leonardo Rossi made an introductive speech and presented the video that has been realized by the LabGovers in collaboration with Doctor Morello and Doctor Sbordoni from Officine GM. The video perfectly expressed the spirit of LabGov: youth, participation, training, and social innovation. Then, they spoke about the goals achieved during this academic year, which are impressive: ReinventAda, ReinventAda + and Human Ecosystem.
ReinventAda consisted in the regeneration of the Flora’s temple in Villa Ada’s park, which took place in October 2013. In that occasion, the LabGovers wanted to create a new form of governance of the commons and for this reason, they decided to practically take care of this site, by giving it new life through a restoration activity, under the supervision of the “Sovrintendenza Capitolina”. It is still an ongoing project and in fact, on June 26th 2014, LabGov will launch the second edition of the event: ReinventAda +. This year, LabGov will be the promoter of a memorandum of understanding open to all those associations willing to take care of Villa Ada, thanks to the model provided by the Bologna’ regulation about the collaboration between citizens and public administration for the cure and regeneration of the urban commons. The translation in English of the latter has been another goal achieved by LabGov 2014 and it will be an important documentation source for all foreigners who have already demonstrated a genuine interest in the LabGov project.
Nevertheless, the most important project that LabGov had the honour to carry out during the last semester has been “Human Ecosystems”. The latter is a new technology that qualitatively and quantitatively measures all information that human beings produce in the main social media and gives us back the real time geography of our relations, ideas and conversations in the form of an ever-changing map. In strict collaboration with the creators of this device, Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico, and with Roma Capitale, the LabGovers wrote a European project in response to a Horizon 2020 call for proposal.
All participants to the conference positively welcomed these results and after this brief introduction, the conversation with the host speakers began. The conversation revolved around the themes of Expo 2015, which perfectly coincide with those on which LabGov is based. In particular, since LabGov focus of the 2014/2015 academic year will be the environmental commons, the LabGovers asked the host speakers to meditate on possible solutions to the problem of a healthy, secure and sustainable global sustenance and on LabGov proposal of the vegetable garden sharing.
Giovanni Lo Storto, LUISS Guido Carli CEO, expressed his enthusiasm for the goals LabGov achieved during the last academic year. He was fundamental in LabGov creation and without his support, such a great success would not have been even possible. He underlined that the natural resources are finite and that we should welcome this situation as an opportunity for the best energies of the society to create new forms of governance for the commons. Even if he could no longer participate to the conference for institutional reasons, he finally praised the choice of the word “Coltiviamoci” which implies a collective commitment towards a common goal.
Carmelo Troccoli, the National Secretary of Coldiretti Giovani Impresa, picked up the baton and continued the discussion. He praised LUISS Guido Carli University for its commitment towards such important and living matters. He gave a picture of the Italian agriculture, showing how it is one of the most competitive in the world. In fact, even though the country has never invested in new technologies or in the GMOs, it has experimented different innovations, which mainly derive from the capacity to be creative. In Italy, a new development method was born, centred on the concept of diversity and for this reason, the successful idea of “smart territories” was launched.
Luca D’Eusebio, instead, told the experience of an informal association: Zappata Romana. Unconsciously, more than 40 voluntary associations of citizens over time have decided to take care of abandoned gardens and have promoted their regeneration. In this context, Zappata Romana created an on-line map of all these experiences and for the first time, the involved associations could communicate with each other. In addition, Zappata Romana gathered all the success stories in a single Handbook, which has been published on the internet. Nevertheless, Luca D’Eusebio admitted that none of these experiences collaborated with the public administration and consequently, some of them followed a regulation process, which in the case of the XI Municipality of Rome has brought the approval of a Municipal regulation for the governance of the vegetable garden sharing.
Finally, Albino Ruberti, Managing Director and President of Zètema Progetto Cultura s.r.l. and coordinator of the working group Lazio Expo 2015, intervened in the debate. He argued that the experience of the Lazio Region in Expo 2015 has superseded the classic hierarchical method in favour of a universal representation of all trade associations of the territory, with the aim of highlighting the excellence it has reached. Since the Lazio Region will enjoy a prominent position for the whole duration of Expo 2015, the latter represents the perfect opportunity to create long-term paths and to promote sustainability, cultural and tourism valorisation, the international dimension of local enterprises and new start-ups. Moreover, the institutions chose 8 macro-themes that constitute the fundamental prerequisites in order to select the experiences that will presented: the relationship between food and tourism; water; the city-country cleavage; sustainable nutrition; the relationship between genius and innovation; food products; the productive chain of the gastronomic itineraries; centrality of the city of Rome.
In the end, Professor Gregorio Arena (Labsus) and Professor Christian Iaione made the final remarks. In particular, the former informed the audience that the same day, the Bologna’s regulation has been finally approved by a large majority and suggested a reflection on the concept of “sharing”, on which a society should lay its foundations, together with the values of autonomy, trust, responsibility, reputation and transparency. Both professors hope for a radical change of the governance and while thanking all speakers for their participation, they distributed the certificate of attendance to all neo-LabGovers.
“Coltiviamoci” has been an interesting and amazing opportunity to share values and success stories and to lay the foundations of the 2014/2015 LabGov edition. Join LabGov II edition and you will do the most formative experience ever!
